LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Easter Day + April 16, 2006 + St. Paul’s Church, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

All over the world today, millions upon millions of people are singing “Alleluia” (which means “Praise the Lord”) in celebration of the central truth proclaimed by the Christian religion: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!

Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem over 2000 years ago, who lived a hard life as the world tends to measure such things, who was born poor, lived poor, and died poor, He is the one we worship as the eternal Son of God. The Son of Mary who worked as a carpenter with his foster father Joseph, who at the age of 30 became an itinerant rabbi, traveling from town to town, often not knowing where he would sleep or how he would get his next meal, and whose following at its largest was never as many as are now golfing enthusiasts or University of North Carolina alumni.

In his dying moments, Jesus was deserted by most of his friends and followers. He died what was considered to be a shame-filled death, being executed as a common criminal. Any sane observer would surely have concluded that, whatever Jesus had been trying to do, had ended in total failure – at best, had been just an odd fad engaged in for a brief time by a small group of religious fanatics. Yet our civilization dates its calendars from his birth, an event which emerges as the dividing point in human history.

Today the Church continues to witness to the message which has remained unchanged throughout the past twenty centuries: the good news that, in fact, Jesus not only triumphed over the forces which seemingly had defeated him, but even more, conquered death itself!

That’s the Christian claim. The question is, is it true?

This morning, I would like to speak especially to any whose faith in the Resurrection may be shaky, imperfect, or uncertain.

In his first letter to the Church in Corinth, St. Paul put it bluntly: “If Jesus did not rise from the dead, our religion is futile!” All that you and I think of as being included in what we call “The Christian Faith” – our entire understanding of who and what kind of being God is, who and what we are as human beings, and all that follows from that understanding, all of that is not only foolish, but utterly worthless if Jesus did not rise from the dead. Why?

To be sure, one might extract a code of ethics which are common to most religions and, by making them human-centered, hang on to them apart from any belief in God. But such ethics would only have value if enough other people adopted them, and would fall by the wayside if others stopped accepting or following them. And isn’t that just what we seem to be seeing these days, not just a society, but a world whose responses to Christian values are either rejection or perhaps even worse, a blank stare which says “I don’t know what you are talking about!”

That which gives reality to Christian morals and all the teachings of the Christian religion is a person: Jesus of Nazareth. If he did not rise from the dead, if the Gospel is untrue in that assertion, there is really no reason to believe any of the rest of it. If the Resurrection is not real, there is no basis for thinking, or hoping, that there is anything more to human existence than the few rather brief years given to us. It would mean that we just live our short lives, enjoy our few pleasures suffer our pains and then disappear like a puff of smoke! All the good we had done, our acts of love, our growth as people would end with the death of our bodies. Some memories might linger on for a while in the minds of those who knew us, but time would eventually dim those memories, the death of the next generation would entirely wipe them out. And then, nothing! The alternative, the Christian understanding, leads not to death, but to life! If we look at existence in the light of the Resurrection of Jesus, everything makes sense! Everything has value! Our acts of love, our intelligence, all that we are or become has meaning! Life itself emerges not as meaningless but meaningful! True, faith in Christ and his resurrection does not do away with sorrow in life, but it does take away its finality! If our suffering in this life is not the end, we can put it in a different perspective and go beyond it, freed from the tyranny of physical or emotional suffering, from the hurt of broken relationships and all other painful pot holes which life may bring.

The Easter message is one of triumph and power! How thrilling it is to hear it, to be convinced by it, and to accept the magnificence of it! When the worship of God lifts us beyond our ordinary, daily concerns, when the joy of singing “Alleluia!” confronts us with the beautiful reality which is Jesus, somehow, deep down, we may know there is meaning to life and that, in God, we have found that meaning!

Earlier in this sermon, I said that I wished to address myself especially to any whose faith in or certainty of the Resurrection might be unclear or shaky. In one way or another, that may include almost everybody here. To be sure, some may have greater clarity, much stronger faith and fewer doubts than others; some may seldom give the Resurrection any thought at all! But all of us have one thing in common – we are all humans, and humans, by definition, are imperfect beings. We love imperfectly, but we also hate imperfectly. We believe imperfectly, but we also doubt imperfectly. So, through word and ceremony, through ritual and proclamation, the Church teaches us over and over those fundamental truths which validate all the rest and which provide the bases for our religious faith.

Suppose it’s all really true! Suppose that what the Church has taught through the centuries, and teaches now, is actually so: that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to be born, live, suffer, die, and rise from the dead – for us! Suppose it’s really true that, in Christ, the human race has been reconciled to God and the way opened to a more abundant, wonderful life than can be known or lived apart from God. Suppose it’s true that there is a life beyond this one, a larger life, a better life, one which builds on this one to an extent beyond our capacity even to imagine! Suppose it’s all true!

For over 2000 years, the Church has proclaimed those very things. Millions upon millions of women and men have found happiness, fulfillment, and peace through the acceptance not merely of those teachings, but more, their acceptance of the Living God to whom they point. That’s a fact of history.

Now, at this moment in your life, the question is where do you stand? What do you believe? Is Easter merely, as the ad says, “the perfect time to buy new shoes” or, as another commercial shouts, “It’s chocolate bunny time again!” – or is it truly the Feast of the Resurrection of Jesus?

My privilege as a priest is to say “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” To say that it is all true! You can depend on it! You can build your life on it! You can entrust your future, even your death to it, if you will.

May these 50 days of Easter be happy and holy for you and yours.

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

This page last modified on Friday, April 11, 2008 09:39 PM